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Low volume on turntable??

Hi everyone, so I’m new to vinyl and have a lot to learn but I just hooked up a my first turn table, and with my preamp at maximum volume, and amp at full gain, it was still veryy quiet and had no depth/bass. The turntable is an old Denon DP-31L that I just installed a new cartridge in (AT-95E) --->Cary Audio AES SE-3 preamp---->McIntosh MC2125--->Klipsch RP-5’s. The system sounds magnificent running .wav vinyl rips with a Monarchy DIP upsampler--> Emotiva XDA-1 DAC in between my comp and the preamp, so there must be something wrong with either the unit, or how i hooked it up (basic built in RCA to preamp, with the integrated ground wire running to the Mcintosh chassis). On the plus side the ultra-quiet music has no hums, or background distortion whatsoever, even at full volume.

Any advice or thoughts would be much appreciated! Cheers
hockey4496
almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
Lew, in addition to Mofi’s comments, as you may have noted Hockey4496 did say in the OP that there was "no depth/bass." Weak bass of course being one of the major consequences of the absence of RIAA equalization that would be provided by a phono stage.

Best regards,
-- Al

lewm
13,114 posts
 
Good points, Al and mofi.
There were a slew of products marketed in the 90s, receivers and integrated amplifiers mostly, that had input jacks labeled "phono" and yet contained no phono stage.  The label was to indicate a pair of high level inputs to receive the output of one's outboard phono stage, but its presence caused many to believe they could run the output of a cartridge directly in to those jacks.  I'm not sure if that is what caused confusion for the OP.

johnnyb53
3,510 posts
 
LpGear offers their own upgrade stylii to hotrod the AT95E. One is a Virtual Line stylus for $89.95. The other is a Shibata stylus for $129.95.

Both are favorably reviewed as significant performance improvements over the stock elliptical stylus.

Shibata stylus upgrade reviewed
Virtual Line stylus upgrade reviewed

wolf_garcia
6,708 posts
 
Sumiko Pearl…great sounding and lists for $125, saved the day on my Linn Basik/Akito rig.
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danvignau
935 posts
 
Even the output of a cartridge is very low, the RIAA equalization is even more important. When recording an LP, bass signal is diminished, both to allow the stylus to track the big bass wave forms, and to keep the groove spacing down to allow more tracks on an LP. The phono preamp boosts the signal and adds the big bass boost back.
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